巴西世界杯能"干净"吗？

Brasília – the Brazilian capital carved from the savannah 50 years ago – is a hard city to love. I hate to say this while its architect, 104-year-old Oscar Niemeyer, lies ill in a Rio hospital, but Brasília was built for cars and architecture critics, not for people. It’s a place for bureaucrats to have a quiet life, a Bonn in the tropics. Traffic jams are rare, even at 5pm when the ministries empty and everyone sails home along the huge central axis. This is a middle-class town.

50年前兴建于大草原之上的巴西首都巴西利亚是一座很难让人喜爱的城市。我不愿意在其设计者、104岁高龄的奥斯卡·尼迈耶(Oscar Niemeyer)因病住进里约热内卢一家医院的时候这么说，但巴西利亚是为汽车以及建筑评论家、而不是人类建造的。它是官僚们享受平静生活的地方，是热带地区的波恩。这里即便在下午5点也很少出现交通拥堵，那时各部委都已空无一人，所有人都沿着巨大的中轴线驱车回家。这是一座中产阶级的城市。

Admittedly, not everything goes smoothly. In the hotel, the shower is cold and WiFi rarely works. Outside in the soft tropical rain, military police are everywhere, as if the soldiers still governed Brazil. But visiting Brasília recently, I absorbed the sense of a rising country. Just off that main axis, hammering resounds from inside the National Stadium, nearly ready for football’s World Cup of 2014. There and at the Rio Olympics in 2016, Brazil will show itself to the world. Every World Cup has a message. Germany in 2006 presented itself as a “normal country that had given its past a place. South Africa in 2010 wanted to be “world class. But Brazil’s aim is “clean games. Its two tournaments are meant to showcase a transformation: Brazil is attacking corruption.

诚然，这里也并非一切顺利。在酒店，洗澡水是冷的，无线网络也几乎无法使用。在飘洒着热带细雨的街道上，军警随处可见，仿佛军人仍在统治着巴西。但最近访问巴西利亚，我有一种这个国家正在崛起的感觉。就在那条中轴线的边上，从即将建成的国家体育场里面传来敲击声，2014年足球世界杯将在此举行。巴西将在此次世界杯和2016年里约热内卢奥运会上向全世界展示自己。每届世界杯都有一个主题。德国在2006年世界杯上将自己展示为一个告别过去的“正常国家。南非在2010年世界杯上希望打造一个“世界一流国家的形象。但巴西的目标是“干净比赛。巴西打算通过这两大赛事表明一种转变：巴西正在反腐。

In Brazil, as in most countries, corruption was always how things worked. Joris Luyendijk put it best in his book on the Middle East, People Like Us: in corrupt countries, it’s not simply that the system is corrupt. More than that, he writes, “corruption is the system. Corruption is how people get things done. Corruption shapes every network. It’s the motivation to work in government.

巴西和大多数国家一样，始终只能靠腐败才能办成事情。约里斯·卢因迪克(Joris Luyendijk)在《像我们一样的人：曲解中东》(People Like Us: Misrepresenting the Middle East)一书中对此作了精彩的描述：在腐败国家，不仅整个体系是腐败的。更甚的是，他写道，“腐败成为了体系。腐败是人们办事的方式。腐败塑造了所有体系。它是人们在政府工作的动力。

Brazil ranks 73rd out of 183 countries on Transparency International’s corruption perception index. Even to become as clean as Spain or the US would be a revolutionary change. No other Bric is attempting anything similar. Only in Brazil is a system of corruption running smack into a serious anti-corruption drive.

在透明国际(Transparency International)的腐败指数排名中，巴西在183个国家中排名第73位。即便要变得像西班牙或美国一样干净，巴西也需要作出革命性的改变。其他金砖国家没有尝试类似举措。只有巴西大力推行反腐举措。

When people in Brasília talk about tackling corruption, the Brazilian gift of charm makes you want to believe them. And yet something is undoubtedly happening. In a country where politicians used to stay in parliament simply to avoid being prosecuted, a new law bars many people convicted of crimes from holding electoral office. In a country where prison was always for black and poor people, José Dirceu, former chief of staff to ex-President Lula, has just been given 10 years for his role in the Mensal?o scandal, in which Lula’s government paid opposition lawmakers for votes. In President Dilma Rousseff’s first 18 months in office, seven ministers left after corruption scandals. And in sport, Ricardo Teixeira, the eternal head of Brazil’s football federation who had expected to run the World Cup, quit in March after a bewildering string of scandals.

当巴西利亚的人们谈论解决腐败问题时，他们天生的魅力让你不由地想要相信他们。然而，巴西确实正在发生一些变化。在这个国家，以往政客们进入议会往往只是为了避免遭到起诉，如今，一项新法规禁止许多被判有罪的人担任需经选举产生的职位。在这个以往监狱似乎只为黑人和穷人而设的国家，巴西前总统卢拉(Lula)的前幕僚长约瑟·迪尔塞乌(Jose Dirceu)因牵涉“大型月补贴丑闻而被判处10年监禁。在这出丑闻中，卢拉政府向反对党议员行贿以便让他们投票给自己的党派。在巴西总统迪尔玛·罗塞夫(Dilma Rousseff)上台的头18个月里，先后有7位部长因贪腐丑闻下台。在体育领域，原本预计将负责世界杯事宜的巴西足协终身主席里卡多·特谢拉(Ricardo Teixeira)，因为一系列令人眼花缭乱的丑闻而在今年3月辞职。

World Cups practically invite corruption. Stadiums and infrastructure are needed in a hurry. Brazil’s total spending is officially put at R$27.1bn ($13bn) but costs often overrun, especially if somebody’s friend has a construction company.

世界杯往往会滋生腐败。举办世界杯需要在很短的时间里建设体育场馆和基础设施。巴西官方预计支出总额为271亿雷亚尔（合130亿美元），但费用往往超支，尤其是如果某人的朋友有一家建筑公司的话。

However, Brazil’s Office of the Comptroller General scrutinises public spending and sometimes claws money back. After analysing projects for three stadiums, the office cut budgets by about a sixth. “We thought they were charging too much for some items, Luiz Navarro, vice-minister in the office, told me. Hundreds of millions of reals were also shaved off urban transport projects related to the World Cup. You never heard of that kind of thing happening in South Africa, where stadium budgets only rose. As for corruption around Brazil’s World Cup, Navarro says: “There have been no big scandals so far. This is even something unexpected. Brazilian preparations have been slow, inefficient and often shielded from the public – but relatively clean.

不过，巴西审计总署(Office of the Comptroller of the Currency)负责审查公共支出，有时也会追回一部分资金。在对三个体育场项目进行分析之后，审计总署将预算砍掉大约六分之一。副署长路易斯·纳瓦罗(Luiz Navarro)告诉我：“我们认为他们某些物品的费用太高了。与世界杯有关的城市交通项目中的许多资金也被砍掉。你从未听说过南非发生过此类事情，那里只会增加体育场的预算。至于与巴西世界杯有关的腐败问题，纳瓦罗表示：“迄今还未出现重大丑闻。这甚至有点出乎我们的意料。巴西世界杯准备工作进展缓慢、低效、往往不公开，但相当干净。

. . .

……

Luis Fernandes, professor of international relations turned executive secretary of the sports ministry, told me that on entering government he’d been surprised by the thicket of controls on any spending. “It makes the actual enactment of a development project more difficult than it should be, he sighed. “It’s a very heavy bureaucracy. But given Brazil’s history, he understood it.

巴西体育部执行秘书路易斯·费尔南德斯(Luis Fernandes)曾经当过国际关系教授，他告诉我，进入政界后，他对所有支出的繁琐控制措施感到意外。他叹息道：“它加大了发展项目的实际执行难度。它非常官僚主义。但是考虑到巴西的历史，他能够理解这些。

No doubt some people are skimming money off the World Cup. Navarro says he worries most “about the local level, where we don’t have so much supervision. Still, at least corruption in Brazil is no longer a sort of unquestioned fact of nature.

毫无疑问，一些人正从世界杯项目上捞钱。纳瓦罗表示，他最担心“地方层面，因为地方上比较缺少监督。然而，最起码，在巴西腐败不再是理所当然的事情。

However, it does depend what you count as corruption. Brasília’s stadium will have 70,000 seats. After 2014, it will become a white elephant, because no local team draws even 5,000 spectators. Several other stadiums under construction are equally pointless, says the Danish pressure group Play The Game. This squandering of public money has been shrouded with falsehoods by Rousseff’s government. Brazil’s sports ministry has forecast an economic boost worth more than $70bn from the World Cup – a claim that almost every sports economist would dismiss. Surely misleading your population is a form of corruption too?

然而，这个问题要看你如何界定腐败。巴西利亚的体育场将有7万个座位。2014年以后，它将成为一个累赘，因为当地任何一支球队都难以吸引到5000名观众。丹麦压力团体Play The Game表示，其他几座在建的体育场同样毫无意义。罗塞夫的政府一直在向公众撒谎，掩盖这种浪费公共资金的行为。巴西体育部预计世界杯对经济的拉动作用将超过700亿美元，几乎所有体育经济学家都会对这种说法不以为然。误导本国民众想必也可以算作一种腐败吧？